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NEW YORK — Amazon has introduced a new tool on the Amazon Pharmacy website that promises to save money and time for prescription drug users. The service gives patients with prescriptions access to discount coupons applicable to branded drugs for common ailments and conditions including asthma, diabetes, emphysema and obesity.
According to Laura Jensen, head of manufacturer and prescriber business development at Amazon, the service matches eligible patients with relevant discount coupons when they order a prescription. For the program’s launch, Amazon has partnered with several major branded drug manufacturers, including GlaxoSmithKline, Kaleo, Novo Nordisk and Dexcom.
Jensen points out that there is no universal storefront for patients to access the coupons, so they are badly underutilized; she points to a statistic that patients have been using the coupons only about 15% of the time.
“What we’ve done is effectively create our own coupon offering that is funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers where, essentially on Amazon Pharmacy, they can apply their coupon rules within the user experience, just like any other Amazon coupon experience,” she explains.
Jensen, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry and Pillpack before it was acquired by the e-commerce giant five years ago, says the program will be expanded through the coming year, focusing on such therapeutic categories as cardiometabolic, diabetes, obesity and respiratory. She adds that the coupon program will be a boon for health care providers as well as for patients.
“These are higher-priced products, and physicians are well aware of the generic alternatives,” she says. “So if they’re reaching for these products it’s for a very good reason. To make patients jump through hoops at that point is really not something that we wanted to do. One of our values at Amazon Pharmacy is we want to uphold the integrity of the conversation that a patient is having with their prescriber; we want to facilitate that interaction.”
According to Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy and a practicing pulmonologist, the service is another step in Amazon’s drive to re-engineer the pharmacy business.
“It is one part of the patient journey that has not been, frankly, reinvented in decades, which is the motivating principle behind why Amazon Pharmacy exists,” he remarks. “We think we can do it better.”
He adds that the coupon service is just one of a series of offerings that Amazon Pharmacy has launched recently, citing RxPass, which gives Amazon Prime members access to more than 50 medications applicable to over 80 common chronic conditions, for just $5 a month on top of their Prime membership.
“We’ve seen overwhelmingly positive uptake and responses to that offering,” he says. “Our Prime prescription savings benefit provides discounts of up to 80% off generics and 40% off brand-name medications.”
Amazon Pharmacy’s goal, he elaborates, is to deliver disproportionate value as part of a broader health care ecosystem that the company is creating. Combining Amazon’s expertise in technology and logistics with the practice of evidence-based medicine will provide multiple benefits, including reliable information — starting with price transparency — for both patients and providers.
“Patients will know what they’re going to pay at the point of purchase, and their provider will as well,” he says.
